Passion First, The Rest Will Follow.

Views From Formula D Long Beach 2017… Part 2 of 2…

The Saturday of Formula Drift Long Beach 2017 was an interesting one. Tiffanie was off shooting a wedding so she couldn’t make it to the second day of FD. That meant that she needed the camera gear to shoot the wedding, and that’s way more important than FD, so I just going to hang out at the event and not shoot. I had the itch to cover the event since I was already there hanging out so the night before, I walked over to my neighbors at Light Capturers to see if I could borrow some lenses. Clifford is a super helpful dude and offered me his entire set-up, which was a Nikon D800. I was surprised he was so willing to just let me use his gear but was a bit reluctant to actually take it because I just don’t know how to shoot with a Nikon. I had done it one other time, maybe 5 years ago, and the interface just completely confused the shit out of me. I am a Canon guy through and through so I just never learned how to operate a Nikon. A camera is a camera on paper but there are so many intricacies that need to be figured-out before you can actually operate one, no matter what name brand it is. Going from Canon to Nikon is like say, going from a Honda to a Toyota. They are both cars but things are just dramatically different. I couldn’t even figure out how to change some of the settings on the camera without having to download a full PDF of a owner’s manual the night before. Like I actually had to Google how to format a memory card on the fucking thing. In any case, I left my Canon body at home since there wasn’t a proper lens for me to use and toughed-out the day with the Nikon. Clifford also gave me his 24-300mm lens to use which was perfect for FD because I could zoom-in quite a bit and if I need a wide shot, I could get that all in one lens. I spent the day at FD with Der and we just walked around and shot random photos. He’s learning photography now as well but he’s shooting with Sony gear so he wasn’t very familiar with Nikon stuff either. I think I eventually got the hang of it even though I felt like a fucking idiot not being able to operate even the simplest of functions on this D800. It felt like alien technology, I swear. When I got home, the photos weren’t too shabby and I honestly appreciated Nikon gear a lot more after spending the day with it. I doubt I’ll ever jump ship and shoot Nikon but I appreciate it for what it is. My 5DMKII Canon is so old that I think I should probably upgrade to a newer Canon body anyway. I think that if anything influenced me more to try something new instead of Nikon gear being amazing, which it might actually be, haha.

Anyways, here are the photos that I captured. The first small chunk is from Day 1, which was shot with my Canon 5D, and the rest is all Nikon D800…

Formula D Round 1: Long Beach 2017

Photos & Words by StickyDilJoe

Nate Hamilton’s RPS13 240SX from Enjuku Racing getting worked-out in the pits during the qualifying round of FD Long Beach…

Interesting to see how the rear end of Matt Field’s S14 just comes apart and the crew can work on the car without obstructions. These drift cars are like toys now that you can deconstruct on the fly, it’s crazy…

This year, Autocon took over the reigns of hosting the car show for Formula D, and I believe they will be accompanying them throughout the season…

Liberty Walk R35 GTR on bags…

I don’t know if some of you guys recognize this Ferrari but it previously had a full Rotiform graphical livery on it. Now the entire car has been stripped of the livery and honestly looks much better. You can actually see the lines of the kit now that the car is in white…

Liberty Walk Ferrari 360 looking pretty great, I must say. The 360 is one of those cars that actually looks better with the Liberty Walk kit because it actually follows the lines of the car…

Sprintex-supercharged Scion FR-S with full Vlene widebody aero kit…

Nice to see a fully-painted TRA Kyoto Pandem R32 GTR. The original one that debuted this year at Tokyo Auto Salon was done in a flat vinyl wrap and I don’t think it really did the car any justice. Despite what people might say or the fact that there aren’t enough people on this side of the Earth willing to do this kit on their hard-to-come-by R32 Skyline, I actually quite like this kit. The box flares work great with the squarish body of the BNR32 and even the front is subtle enough where everything just sort of flows together…

Huge rear over-fenders with a custom BBS LM wheel built to spec to fit under them…

Central Pine’s Lexus GS showing-off how it sits on full T-Demand suspension and SSR Executor wheels…

Gushi was eventually knocked-out by Chris Forsberg but I wish him the best throughout this season…

One of the more interesting new competitors in Formula D this season is this BN Sports 86 piloted by Cameron Moore. Moore isn’t new to FD but they have high expectations for their new 86 with its 950HP 2JZ-GTE set-up…